Entirely Joined Meaning

I was always confused by all the definitions of remix and mashup, but now I dare to publish a remix (mashup?) from a song and recorded speech (both by me) that is my very personal way to explain remix.

How I did this. Look here for a tutorial on it!

And look here for the assignment idea!

A Remix Remix

I am sure you have already listen to a remix where you can hear a song interrupted by someone saying something. This is exactly what the tutorial is about.

I will create this kind of remix and by that telling you about the foundations of Audacity which is a sound editing software and which you can download for free. But first listen to the example.

I have used a song I created for a different tutorial and I will record me saying one of the many definitions on remix.

The following 8 but short tutorial videos will tell you about all. Just before watching them download and install Audacity. Note that I am a PC user, Shortcuts I mention may be different with a Mac.


The Audacity interface, loading an audio file and previewing it:

Select, copy and paste to a new track, remove clipping noises:

Generating new audio parts and moving them.

Recording and noise removal.

Taking parts of the speech and remixing it with the song. 

More parts of the speech will be remixed with the song.

Exporting as mp3.

One, Two, Wow!

As an example of an assignment idea I have posted at the ds106 assignment bank, I have produced a piece of music, where you can hear a voice saying something over a beat.

I used Soundation to create a beat and exportet this as a .wav to my computer. After this I loaded the file into Audacity. In Audacity I recorded my voice saying 'One, two, Wow.' I did not choose the words for any meaning, but because I felt it right for my chosen beat.

Music Production and Sharing

A series of tutorials about how to produce pieces of music and how to share them on Soundcloud and Tumblr.

The first video shows you how to find the download page from a great free sound editing software called Audacity.

The next video shows you how to produce a beat with the free online software Soundation. When have created the beat it is opened in Audacity where a voice track is recorded. (You could record in Soundation, but not in the free version.)

The third video is about sharing a Soudcloud track on a Tumblr blog.



German Ideal World Round

Have you ever sung a canon with yourself?

This is possible with a record of you singing the canon once. Afterwards you have to listen to yourself and to start the next recording when the next voice comes in.
It is possible to cheat by recording the canon only once and copying it, but this is no fun and you may have difficulties to synchronise the parts.




For my recording I've chosen a canon which looks easy but is tricky, still, it has the nice effect to really achieve a multi-layered sound of voices.
The piece is in German, but below the notes I present a translation.

 

 

It takes little to be happy
And whoever is happy is a king.

 

 

While recording headphones should be used. Otherwise the sound which comes from the speakers is also recorded. This usually interferes with the quality of the recording.

A possible course is:
- plug in microphone and headphones
- start software
- start the recording of the canon according to your software's ways
- go back to the start of your recording
- add/ go to new track (if necessary; in Audacity a new track is automatically added)
  and hit record
- start singing when the next part comes in
You can repeat this.

When I was a child and during my time at university I always was part of a choir and the above round is often sung in German choirs. For me this is a world far in the past. I still love listening to a polyphony if voices but can hardly imagine being in a choir with all the pink ideal world people around me. Still, the music they are producing is nice.


This post is inspired by the ds106 assignment idea Row Row Polyphony.


here you can find the sources of the notes and the translation:
notes:
http://www.mamas-truhe.de/lieder/froh-zu-sein-bedarf-es-wenig.html
translation:
http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2669&c=38

Merry Hacksters Announcement

What does that mean, Merry Hacksters?

Kevin Hodgson visually has shown this for some time, in the style of one of his awesome web comics.

@dogtrax @raccooncity @swilson416 @StefanieJ2 and maybe @gr8kree8

When I had to make a decision concerning a commercial for the ds106 radio project of fall 13, I took the text of Kevin's little comic and spoke the words into a microphone.




After this I opened an audio editing software and in a second track added a groovy sound I've found on freesound.org.
I also tried out some effects like echo and modulation to achieve a richer sound.

The logo for the soundcloud file I've created as my version for a logo for our group, which was anyone supposed to do.




@dogtrax @raccooncity @swilson416 @StefanieJ2 and maybe @gr8kree8

dailycreate log September 28th 2013

Two weeks since my last log. The peaceful concentration on dailycreates is past, there are many more creations to do, I managed three in 14 days, it is rewarding, still.

Much is spoken about philosophy, I did my share by telling about one of my favourite novels.




Already a week later, and by this late, I had the possibility to add to the dailycreate repository by doing a dailycreate, which I found an awesome idea.
dailycreate tdc625: Create a new ds106 Challenge by Remixing a Previous One.

I took a random dailycreate, which I got by clicking the provided link.
Live, laugh, and love… take a picture that expresses good times.
After this I thought the really opposite would be to take a photo about sadness, but rather decided a photo of emerging from sadness would be more challanging.

My post:

Finally some Drama.
September 24, 2013

Original assignment idea:
Live, laugh, and love… take a picture that expresses good times.
http://tdc.ds106.us/tdc501/

Newly submitted assignment idea:
Cry, die, then fly … take a picture that expresses emerging from a crisis.
 

Then I dared something I've always wanted to do, a time lapse video, which is pictures taken over a long time combined to a video. I chose to make bubbles and shot how they are vanishing in time and finally becoming soapy water again.
Look here for tdc626: Make a time lapse video that shows a transformation.

How different was Cris' choice. First the color which is red and the highest temperature contrasted to my blue and then observing the merry behaviour of a human being instead of an inanimate appearance like bubbles, though both are enjoyable.

Finally I was surprised by me liking one of Ary's pictures, who I still know little, but I think we have something in common when choosing motives.

I would have liked to embed at least one video of the Create an I am ds106 / We are ds106 video clip dailycreate. I was not able to make a decision, for the contributions are all very awesome. Do not miss watching them, they are good and for those who never have time, they are short.

Stefanie's DS106 Rap

One of this weeks assignments is creating a radio bumper for ds106, but I already did one in spring '13.
This way I rather have chosen something similar to this from the assignment bank, which is to produce your very own Rap.




I had to go to Soundation to come up with a beat. Here you can find various building blocks for creating a suitable beat. I did this very intuitively by choosing a block by name, listening to it and deciding if I may use it or not.

I do not know much about Rap, but I know there is a beat and words, which are spoken appropriate to the beat. So I tried and felt awkwardly first, but then found my way with some words. Hear yourself!

The recording of my words I managed with Audacity. While listening to the beat via my head phones I have spoken the words into the microphone. After this I listened to the combination and giving it some tries I finally was content.
I would have liked to give my voice more volume, but did not manage in my small room and sitting in front of a computer, the atmosphere was not like being able to feel free enough for a more impressive voice. Still, I like my DS106 Rap.

Rescue

After Julie has decided to join a group of people, who oppose the government of Thasis,  there are tasks for her. A group of dancers are accused to have despised the warnings of the authorities to stop their futile doing as dancers but rather offer their services to the good of Thasis, which was working in a weapon factory.
They have locked up the dancers as if they are dangerous criminals. Julie is part of the group which is assigned for rescuing the dancers from a well watched prison. Part of the action has been recorded and you can listen to it here.





I did not choose an entire film like proposed in the assignment "Context", but just a trailer of the movie "LockOut"  and a short clip of the film. I imagined a rescue a chaotic event and this way you may not be able to find a certain plot in the audio but rather an atmosphere, which is intended.
I opened the two video clips in my movie editor and took the parts I needed. The result I saved as an mp3 file and uploaded this to Soundcloud to  be able to embed it here.

Pursuit

Julie has attended a forbidden party and has just realized that she is now wanted by the police. A police officer detects her and she runs away.



For this little audio story I altered the ds106 assignment "911, What’s Your Emergency?" in the way that a police officer calls his or her head office. He takes the radio with him or her and reports what happens.
I recorded what the officer says with my voice and added a police radio sound effect in Audacity. I as well put in a running sound and recorded myself gasping for breath. All together it makes the impression of a police officer pursuits a suspect. I'd rather liked that the gasping and the spoken words come together. The next time I may record me gasping and speaking the same time.

Just A Mum

When I saw  something about a Youtube Duet I asked myself what the last song is I can remember I listened to, because for more then 15 years I haven't listen much to popular music but rather classical music.

Finally I did remember that there was a young woman who sang about her mother, so I typed in mother and got this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ2tluarzZs, which leads you to a video of the performance of “Mother” byRoger Waters & Sinead O'Connor. I knew it is not the song I've looked for, yet it is the singer who sang the song and I recalled the lyric includes a garden and flowers; the right words to find the right song “Nothing compares2U” by Sinead, 1989. For this I chose a video on youtube that combines a slideshow of landscape images with the song. I did a mashup of the two videos by making one partly transparent and emphasized sometimes one of the songs by pushing up the volume. This comes out very nicely.

"Mother" feels harsh, for it describes the mother of a boy or man as making him dependent on her by inducing fear to live his life. I thought this rather interesting to me because the song I remembered was a song about someone who has loved their Mum* but she has died recently. That Sinead sings both songs I find compelling.
In the end I could not understand that in both songs nothing is mentioned about that mothers are only people and for my post chose the title "Just A Mum".

*maybe it is about her boyfriend, who has left her; I find the song rather ambiguous, especially the melancholy style which implies rather singing about a lost mother than a lost boyfriend

Media Metamorphoses

Click the audio for the story.





For this assignment "Storytelling with Recycled Media" you were obliged to take media from a page on minus.com, where ds106 students earlyer have uploaded media, for which they themselves have no use. Unfortunately there's a lack of videos and I've missed the videos I've upoaded. I presume somthing went wrong during the uploading process.

Still, the media are interesting and because I wanted something move I chose pictures to make animated gifs from them. I used a filter in Gimp to blend two images over a background. You can find it in the menu Filters -> Animation -> Blend. Here you can choose how many steps you need for the blending. After the filter has applied you can playback the animation (menu Filters -> Animation -> Playback.) I saved the file as an animatied gif.

I also chose 3 sounds and mixed them to one file which tells the story requested for the assignment.

Thunder & Hail

Here I've made some weather on my desk. I took a cardboard box and put some toy pieces in it and moved all around. This became a thunder. Then I took some paper clips and dropped them into the cardboard box.




I guess you don't believe this thunder sound can be the result of cardboard and pieces ...
This is right. The original thunder lacked of bass and the typical reverberation. Hear yourself.





I edited the thunder original in audacity by adding some bass and gverb to get the above result.

The idea I got from the audio assignment of ds106 'Imitate some Weather' and it is meant to be an assignment concerning week 7 and 8 of the regular course requirements for ds106 students.

Cultural Tension

Four years ago I joined facebook. This was an interesting experience for me and I tried to make out what unwritten rules I should consider here. It was a long time until I dared to participate in any conversation. Now I use one of my first tries for an ds106 assignment which is called 'Text Impersonation'.


Michal has posted a photograph of three men sitting in a restaurant on a bench, arms around the necks of the neighbor.

This was the start of the dialogue I have chosen to act out and record:



In the following, you can also read the dialogue.

Michael (Hawaiian):
It's backlit and dark, but it's the only photo I have of our art school reunion with Karl and Chris - a very good moment.

Karl (German): Filled up and high on Sake ;-)

Michael (Hawaiian): Hey, glad you made it back ok. : )

                                 It was good to see you, old man.

Min (Asian): That's sweet!

Yong (Asian): Three brothers in Phila!

Karl (German): hehe... and it goes from 'white as a cheese-cake' towards 'white with little bit of asian' towards 'asian'. Chris is so to speak the 'missing-link'

Michael (Hawaiian): I knew I had a role on this planet! And yes, I think I may have been called something like a 'missing link' between humans and sub-humans in the past by certain girlfriends. ; )

Karl (German): humans and subhumans? what a horrible thing to say! girlfriends....tststs... I knew there is a reason why I don't let those into my life!

Anna (German): Who, in the end, were the sub-humans is not really mentioned, is it? But I agree. There is no thing such a sub-human here.

 

Radio Experiment or About Being A Child In World War II

Come & Listen...

to what part of my family story during World War II has inspired me to produce a little radio drama.

My parents, both are born 1937 and this way have been children during the war. They have told me about this unfortunate experience and I decided to use this assignment to work this out for me.

Further more my grandma was an illegitimate child of someone who was remembered to be Italian and Jewish and my grandpa really was worried while having to live in Nazi-Germany with his beloved wife. He actually listened to a station which was forbidden to listen to. You even could be put to death for this crime. My mother was about five years old when she actually sang the sound of BBC London in the streets, but ... fortunately nothing has happened to them, accept from my grandpa was very angry with my mother. They all survived war without being arrested or being hurt during an air raid. Yet it was a hard time for children, even harder for my dad who has to flee the parts of Germany which has been overwhelmed. He saw dead very early in his live.

I also did work for a friend and scientist, who did research about four clergy man, who actually were put to death because of radio crime. One child of one of them is still alive and can report of how it was when her father was arrested and killed. The Nazis sent the family even a bill concerning the execution.
However, nothing like this happens in the following show.







To be able to produce the show I did the following:
After I wrote myself a rough script, I started producing the show by thinking out some dialog, which is entirely spoken by myself. I simply did not manage persuading some friends to lend me their voice. They are all very busy and really very often have to help me out for my artwork.
Anyway, it is possible in Audacity to change the level of a voice. I used this to create voices of a child, a man and some women.
For some reason I suddenly had the idea to produce the show using two languages. This had made it more interesting to listen, yet it is more difficult to follow the content. I acted out the story in German, the native language of the protagonists, and laid over it a voice interpreting the dialogue.

Whenever I have finished dialogue which belongs together I thought about sound effects and atmosphere. Some I recorded myself, but most I have found on freesound.org. I have listed links to the sounds at the end of the blog.

I used Audacity to produce the entire show. When I started I did not know too much about the software, but I know now. At the beginning I often did unnecessary steps, for there have been tools and possibilities I did not know about. Like this to the end the process has fastened, which was good, for I did run a bit out of time and energy.

I can not say if all the work was really fun. I would need some distance to the process of producing to say this, because it was an intense experience. In the end I was proud, but I also compared to professional produced audio books, which have generally a kind of fuller rounder sound. I presume they have further software and hardware possibilities like sound proofed rooms and very good recording facilities and, yes, experience. Yet I like so much the experimental touch of my work, which always is interesting and exciting.


Líst of links to the sound I have used:
spring atmosphere 1
spring atmosphere & piano
piano improvisation 1
dishes
door
footsteps 1
children playing
ticking watch
footsteps 2
place atmosphere
market atmosphere
old radio music
noise find station
BBC London announcement
knocking
unlock door
piano improvisation 2
air raid atmosphere
after air raid atmosphere
waiting room atmosphere
soft running
spring atmosphere 2
steps on grass
piano melody 1
piano melody 2
piano melody 3
piano melody 4

Lion Cage

Here I got some live into a piece of the silent  movie "The Circus" with Charly Chaplin. First I thought it will be impossible to add any foley sound here, because you have to know in advance were to add sound of steps or noises of the clothes, but after I've watched the clip over and over I knew where to produce the sound. I really was impressed by the result after I've added the sound to the clip.

 

 

 

I thought about producing the sound in one take, yet in some descriptions of how to make foley, I felt advised to record one take for any sound: moves, feets, specifics. It would also have been difficult to produce the steps of Charly and the steps of the Pony (or is it a Donkey?) together, so I recorded them separately, too.

Unfortunately I don't have a video editing software in which you can save just the sound without the video. This way I had to combine the tracks in the sound editing software audacity.  I started the video by saying "start" and recorded the corresponding foley. The word start became the start point of any track, so that I could combine all to one track. I exported the audio as mp4.  For a test I combined the foley and the clip in the video editing software "Movie Maker", which worked well.

 

So how I've produced the sound? I did not make it very complicated. I put on a jacket which made a good fabric sound and I used my feet for the steps. I actually dared something for the steps, which was scattering some sand to my floor. This is a strange thing for anyone who tries to keep their floor clean. Afterwards I found my worries of making some dirt a kind of irrational.

For the hoofed animal I used some beakers and for the noise of a falling bolt I used a ruler from metal on a piece of pipe. I tried to add the small clap of the door, too, but this has somehow declined.

I imagined the lion making sleeping noises and produced these imagined sounds with my noise. That it was.

 

I've thought a lot of foley artists. If I would be one it were difficult for me to take my work serious. I would like taking me serious, yet it may be difficult. At least I may not be observed while working (:

After War Spring Poetry

This post is meant to be both, the first scene of my radio show and a weekly audio assignment. The assignment demands reciting a poem, recording it and make it a part of a story. I have chosen a German poem by Eichendorf, which I have translated. Any admirer of poetry may forgive me any roughness in the translation.
For my audio piece I recorded both versions, the German and the English. I also added a lovely piece of sound where you can hear spring noise and a short piano recording. In the end I was in love with this creation. Here it is:





For my radio show the above audio displays the first scene. A little girl plays around and sings in a garden, when something is going to happen. First the story of how she gets to the garden will start and second her foster mum is approaching with news, which will be revealed at the end of the story. The growing spring and piano sound are meant to hint to the following action.

Invitation to Radio Earth

Below you can listen to a piece of audio, which is meant to be a commercial for attracting listeners to tune in to the next Radio Earth show.



This one was interesting. Especially when I recorded my voice and spoke loud and clearly, but it doesn't fit together with the noise of the helicopter. I had to analyse what sounds wrong and the result was, if a helicopter is near to a person this person may shout rather than spoke in a normal voice. Therefore I shouted and my neighbors might have been scared.

For the piece I mixed my voice with some powerful sounds to evoke an atmosphere of powers at work. Like this the listener may become excited of tuning in to the powerful story announced.
The links to the sounds are:

• Helicopter
• Thunder
• Heavy Wind

In Audacity I arranged the sounds and the voice by starting with a thunder and the approaching helicopter. When the helicopter is nearest the voice appears to advertise the next show. Then the voice gets lost in thunder and storm noise. I like this. I just asked myself several times if there is any guidance how to produce a commercial or if it is OK to just go for what my intuition tells me is right here.

About Earth' People

For a part of a imagined radio show I intend to produce a little story. The radio show is to be announced via a radio bumper which you can listen to below:




I started with recording my voice saying "This is Radio Earth on DS106. Come and listen to stories of people from all over the world." (Anybody, who finds fault in my language, I am not a native speaker in English.)
After this I opened the file in Audacity. I added some echo. In the internet I found a funny Ukulele piece which I combined with the voice. I also did several improvement and had the idea to arrange single words of the voice according to the music, which sounds a bit split, yet it also emphasizes and sounds more interesting.

For a comparison I listened to earlier audio pieces and found I have improved at least in recording my voice, which has become clearer and more confident.

I like producing audio, but I find my concentration is utterly demanded. When there is noise around me I even get angry. Working with visual media means you can 'close your ears', even listen to some good music during work. This is not possible while creating audio pieces. I wish I had a quiet place in the country.

Sea Fight

One one this weeks assignments of ds106:
Create a sound effect story - tell a short story using nothing but sound effects.



Here I collected some sounds on freesound.org and combined them in audycity.
I imagined a world under water like in Captain Nemo. The peace of this world is attacked but luckily repulsed.